This time I have done a much-beloved dinosaur online, after say a month-odd or three weeks of work. This is a purely digital pic of Miragaia longicollum (Long-necked being of Miragaia parish and the Miragaia Unit of the Sobral Formation), the new stegosaur from Portugal. It was from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian-Tithonian Stage, 150 million years ago) Period, Lourinha Group, the foremost fossil formation in Portugal and the place where all its well-known dinosaurs are found.

Miragaia is known for its long neck, of course. Thus it was named as a sauropod-mimic stegosaur, but of course basal stegosaurs like it and the gigantic, roughly contemporaneous Dacentrurus had necks like this. It shared its home with Allosaurus (A. europaeus), Torvosaurus (T. sp), Lusotitan the brachiosaur, Dracopelta, a tiny ankylosaur, and even the primitive tyrannosauroid Aviatyrannus jurassica to name just a few. My plan was to draw some pink Aviatyrannus flocking round the male Miragaia who seems to take up almost the entirety of the pic, but I chickened out.Miragaia was medium-sized, measuring 5.5-6 meters long (16-20 feet) and had 17 neck vertebrae, more than some sauropods. Now in this image, Miragaia has a shoulder spike, albeit whether it had such a thing is debatable. There are osteoderms all over its body, making it a tough opponent for any predator.